Although it was a very small town, Port Folio had two undertakers. This was because it was the sort of place lots of old people went to live when they retired, and old people have a tendency to die more than young people, so there was always enough work to keep both undertakers busy. In fact, sometimes there was too much work and the richer families sent their dead relatives off by parcel post to the extremely expensive Di Calma Crematorium, where they sent the ashes back to you in an exquisite urn cast from the finest bone china made with your relative’s own bones.
Valla hated crematoriums. He thought turning dead bodies into little piles of ash was an unforgivable waste of so many useful things.
‘It’s not just the blood,’ he said. ‘I mean, look at my shoelaces. They’re made from the finest human leg sinews, and my drink bottle is a famous athlete’s bladder. There’s just so much useful stuff in a dead body.’
‘Absolutely, darling,’ Mordonna agreed. ‘Especially nowadays when we are all being told to recycle as much as possible.’
‘And look at that lovely outdoor table and chairs that Father made from those old skeletons,’ Valla continued.
‘And if we didn’t have those gorgeous skull-top bowls,’ said Mordonna, ‘what on earth would I use to make crème brûlée in?’
‘I know,’ said Valla, putting his favourite bookmark back in his journal, a bookmark that had once been someone’s left ear.
As midnight struck, Valla took his cloak, wrapped it round himself and went out into the town.
‘Don’t eat anything I wouldn’t, darling,’ Mordonna called after him.
This meant he could eat pretty well anything except burgers and chips, but then he would never eat food like that anyway, even if it had clotted blood poured over it. He could still remember how sick he had been when he had eaten a sausage covered in coagulated blood, only to discover it wasn’t blood but tomato sauce. He hadn’t been able to put anything red in his mouth for days.
Like most places in Port Folio after midnight, the undertakers’ building just down the road from the hotel was deserted. All the doors were locked and the lights were out. Even the dustbins round the back were secure behind a tall wire fence. Of course, Valla could have changed himself into a bat and flown over the fence, but it took a lot of energy changing back and forth between creatures and Valla’s nose told him there was nothing in the dustbin worth salvaging. You might think this meant that Valla had a brilliant sense of smell, but he didn’t. Instead he pulled his nose off, pushed it through the fence and watched as it wriggled up the side of the bin like a big white slug. It wriggled under the lid and two minutes later came back. Valla stuck it back on his face and took a big sniff.
There was nothing, not even a scab or two, just old teabags and rubbish.
The other undertakers’ building, at the poorer end of town away from the beach, was not so neat and tidy. Sure, it was all locked up and dark, but its dustbins were just standing in the alley outside the back door. Valla didn’t need to take his nose off to check them out. He didn’t even need to lift the lids to know there was treasure there. Its delicate aroma greeted him as soon as he turned into the dark alley. And sure enough both bins were like a fine restaurant, a regular vampire’s delicatessen.
The first bin yielded up three fingers and a pair of very hairy nostrils. The second one held the jackpot – an entire foot. Valla collected all the body bits in his environmentally biodegradable non-toxic shopping bag and carried them up to the graveyard, which stood on a small hill behind the town.
As he sat leaning against the gravestone of Mildred Flambard 1783–1803, picking the nasal hairs from between his teeth, he looked out across the town and felt completely at peace with the world. The moon shone across the calm sea. Here and there a few lights twinkled and a small fishing boat chugged out of the harbour on the early tide.
Life doesn’t get much better than this, he thought as he finished the last of his takeaway snack.
He was about to nod off to sleep when he heard a tapping directly beneath him. As he stood up, the big stone slab he had been sitting on slid aside and a thin arm came up out of the grave.
‘Oww, ahh, ooh,’ said a voice from inside the grave.
‘Hello?’ said Valla.
‘Oh,’ said the voice. ‘I did not realise there was someone there. I do not suppose you could give me a hand, could you? This slab is very heavy. I have been trying to move it every night for … umm, pray tell me, what is the year?’
‘It’s two thousand and eight,’ said Valla.
‘Mercy me,’ said the voice. ‘I have been trying to move this slab for two hundred and five years.’
‘You mean, you’ve never been able to in all that time?’ said Valla, intrigued.
‘No,’ said the voice. ‘I am but a frail woman.’
Valla pushed the slab aside and the thin arm was joined by a thin body. Valla reached down, took the hand and helped the body climb out onto the grass.
‘Mildred Flambard, I presume,’ he said.
‘Indeed so,’ said Mildred. ‘Please do not be frightened.’
‘I’m not,’ said Valla, hypnotised by a creature that looked as if it had been dead for years, but was actually still alive.
Sort of.
Mildred’s beauty was the sort of beauty men can only dream of. For normal men, and even for most wizards, that dream would be a terrifying nightmare, but for Valla it was a dream of perfection, a dream that filled his head with but one thought – death doesn’t get any better than this.
‘People are usually petrified,’ said Mildred. ‘I do not know why, but the living just do not seem to be able to handle the dead talking to them.’
‘Look at me,’ said Valla. ‘Do I look like people?’
‘No, not exactly,’ said Mildred. ‘You look as I do. Oh I see, you are dead. Did you just die recently?’
‘I’m not dead,’ said Valla, feeling very flattered that Mildred thought he was. ‘I’m a wizard.’
‘Really?’ said Mildred. ‘Well, I must say, you are the most handsome wizard I have ever seen and I have seen four of them.’
Valla blushed, which in his case meant turning even whiter.
‘In fact,’ Mildred added, fluttering her eyelids, ‘one could say you are drop-dead gorgeous.’
Valla was speechless. He was in love. Here was a girl with so much sophistication that she even knew the drop-dead gorgeous joke. Here was a girl that he could take home to his parents, a girl he knew they would thoroughly approve of.
‘Tell me,’ he said. He took Mildred’s hand in his, then – realising that he was so deeply in love with her that he had no desire to eat it, despite it looking incredibly delicious – he gave it back to her. ‘Tell me. How did you die so young?’
Mildred hesitated, as if unsure what to say.
‘I had the plague and the ostrich pox46 and I was poisoned by a young man who I rejected and I got trampled by a runaway horse while crossing the street to the pharmacy to collect medicine for my tuberculosis,’ she said. ‘I suppose it was just my time to go.’
‘How romantic,’ said Valla, rejecting the idea of nibbling on Mildred’s ear in case he ended up eating all of her.
‘I have lain these past two centuries and more waiting for my true love to arrive,’ said Mildred. ‘And here you are, my Prince Charming.’
As the moon sank over the horizon and the first rays of sunshine tip-toed over the mountain top behind them, Mildred Flambard dropped back into her grave and Valla slid her stone slab over her.47
‘Fear not, my darling,’ Valla said as he slid the stone back the last few millimetres. ‘I am from a family of wizards and I am sure that you and I are bound together by destiny. My family has access to all the magic of the universe and I will work out a way to free you forever from your tomb of darkness.’
And if we can’t, Valla thought as he walked back to the hotel, it’s a very nice tomb of darkness with more than enough room for both of us. I’ll just move in
there.
When Valla arrived back at the hotel, the family barely recognised him. He was smiling. At least, that was what he said he was doing. If he smiled like that at a baby it would have nightmares.
‘You are sure that’s what you’re doing, aren’t you?’ said Mordonna.
‘I think so,’ said Valla. ‘I’ve never smiled before.’
‘Well, if you are,’ said Merlinmary, ‘that’s your emo image done for.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Satanella. ‘I think he looks even more depressing.’
‘Well, I am not depressed,’ said Valla. ‘I am in love and we are going to get married.’
He told them all about Mildred and then asked Winchflat if he had a machine or something that could bring her back to as near a state of being alive as possible.
‘Tricky,’ said Winchflat, ‘Of course, there is a very simple solution, but it’s not ideal.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Well, if I’m not mistaken, this daylight-into-dust thing only works when the light lands on the corpse’s head. I think anywhere else it’s harmless. So the obvious thing would be for your girlfriend to wear a big paper bag on her head during the day.’
‘Yeah,’ laughed Morbid, ‘like yours does.’
‘Are you sure about the daylight thing?’ said Valla. ‘Sounds a bit risky.’
‘No, I’m not completely sure,’ said Winchflat. ‘I think it works with some undead creatures, but not with others.’
‘I think it’s too risky, darling,’ said Mordonna. ‘I mean, it could all go horribly wrong and you could end up with a head in a bag and a pile of dust.’
‘OK,’ said Winchflat. ‘I’ll think of something else.’
‘Couldn’t you turn her into a zombie, Mother?’ asked Valla. ‘Or just clone her?’
‘Cloning could work,’ said Winchflat. ‘We could take one of her cells and use the special photocopier at school to copy it until we had enough cells to make a whole Mildred Flambard.’
‘Have you ever done anything like that before?’ said Mordonna. ‘It sounds terribly complicated.’
‘I’ve done it with an omelette, but not with a human being,’ said Winchflat. ‘I’ve always wanted to try it, though.’
‘It sounds like it could take a very long time,’ said Valla.
‘Yes. I’ll have to work it out,’ said Winchflat. ‘A human body has about thirty-five trillion cells. So first of all I would photocopy one cell and then photocopy that one and the original together so we got two, and then copy those so we got four and so on. It could take a while. The omelette took seven months and … well, there were a few problems.’
‘Problems?’
‘Yes, it turned out with five legs and ran away,’ said Winchflat. ‘I never saw it again, though I heard a rumour it was living in the Amazon rainforest with a raggle-taggle group of other egg-based beings calling themselves the Omelette Liberation Front.’
‘Er, let’s forget the cloning plan,’ said Valla.
‘So it’s down to zombification or simply bringing her back to life then,’ said Betty.
‘Looks like it,’ said Winchflat, who didn’t really fancy either option because they were things his mother would do and not him, and it meant he wouldn’t have an excuse to invent yet another brilliant machine. ‘Unless we used my Massive-Electric-Shock-Dead-Person-iReviver,48 though I’ve only ever used that on bodies that have just died, not on two-hundred-year-old corpses with bits missing.’
They couldn’t decide between living or zombie, and when Valla tossed a coin it didn’t help either because the window was open and the coin flew out into the street and fell down a drain.49
‘When you go to meet your beloved tonight, darling, I will come with you,’ said Mordonna. ‘We will let her decide.’
As soon as Valla pushed the stone slab aside and Mordonna saw Mildred Flambard, she knew that the girl was the perfect match for her son. Her pale grey skin and sunken eyes were a lovely contrast to his pale grey skin and sunken eyes. The two of them were so alike that they could have been brother and sister, except Mildred Flambard said she had not had a brother and Valla looked nothing like any of his siblings.
‘You look so beautiful together,’ said Mordonna with a tear in her eye. ‘So now, Mildred, you must decide: living or zombie? I can do either.’
‘If I am not mistaken, Mother,’ said Valla, blushing, ‘zombies cannot have babies, can they?’
‘You’re absolutely right,’ said Mordonna. ‘Then I shall bring Mildred back to the land of the living.’
‘And I shall live and breathe again as I did before I caught the plague and the pox and TB and Curse of the Newt?’ said Mildred.
‘Yes, my dear,’ said Mordonna. ‘You will be perfect, as is my firstborn, your husband-to-be, my gorgeous Valla.’
‘But my sweetheart won’t be all glowing and rosy-cheeked and horribly fit and healthy-looking, will she?’ said Valla. ‘She will still be the same staggeringly beautiful, ghostly living corpse, won’t she?’
‘Well, or course, my darling,’ said Mordonna. ‘I will perform a cocktail of spells. The first will turn her into a zombie. Then I will do the De-Zombify spell and finally I will do the Collect-Up-All-The-Bits-That-Have-Fallen-Off spell so your bride-to-be has all her bits and pieces in proper working order.’
‘I’ll still be able to howl at the moon, won’t I?’ said Mildred. ‘I used to love howling before I died.’
‘You used to howl at the moon when you were alive?’ said Mordonna, suddenly sounding very, very excited.
‘Yes,’ said Mildred. ‘Does that matter?’
‘Matter? Oh my goodness no,’ said Mordonna, ‘quite the opposite. How did you say you died?’
‘Umm, I, er, umm, the plague, umm, runaway horse…’ Mildred began.
‘But that’s not true, is it?’
‘No,’ said Mildred. ‘I was burnt at the stake as a witch.’
‘Did they do all the medieval witch tests on you while you kept denying it?’ said Mordonna.
Mildred Flambard nodded and hung her head.
‘But they were right, weren’t they? You are a witch, aren’t you?’ said Mordonna.
Mildred Flambard nodded again. ‘Does this mean you will not restore me to life?’ she asked.
‘Oh no, my dear,’ said Mordonna. ‘It means you are even more perfect than we thought you were. Come here and give your mother-in-law-to-be a hug, then we will begin.’
The new moon was only three days old, but it was simply a matter of a quick spell to turn it into a full moon, which is the best sort of moon under which to perform spells to bring people back to life. The whole world and everything in it was bathed in an eerie blue light.
Mildred Flambard lay stretched out on the moss-covered slab of the grave that had been her home and prison for the last two hundred and five years, as Mordonna began to chant in a deep prehistoric moan that sent shivers down the spines of all those who heard it.50
‘Keep your voice down, Mother,’ Valla hissed. ‘We’re in a graveyard and there’s no knowing who or what is in some of these tombs. You could wake up a whole army of horrors that might invade the town.’
‘Well, that would make it a lot more lively, wouldn’t it, darling,’ Mordonna laughed. ‘But you don’t need to worry. These spells are tailored to work only on your beloved and no one else. Her DNA will act like a PIN so no one else can use the magic.’
Thirteen owls and seventy-seven bats gathered in the trees around the graveyard as Mordonna’s chanting reached its highest pitch.
There was a flash of light, a cloud of white smoke and Mildred Flambard sat bolt upright, as alive as she had been the day she died. Or rather, as alive as she had been the day before she had died. At the exact same moment, the thirteen owls turned into bats. The seventy-seven bats turned into owls and, five streets away, a car turned into a side street. Also, though no one saw it or even knew, every single corpse and skeleton in the other ninety-three graves sig
hed and turned over.
‘All we have to do now,’ said Mordonna as they walked back to the hotel, ‘is get you two married.’
‘And maybe Winchflat could give you a two-hundred-year service – changing all your blood, oiling your bones and cleaning out your ears with a toothbrush dipped in bleach,’51 said Valla as he opened the door to the hotel suite.
‘I’d be delighted to, and I think I speak for all of us when I say welcome to our family,’ said Winchflat.
Getting married for wizards is entirely different than it is for humans, especially when one of the wizards has been dead for as long as Mildred Flambard. For a start, it is extremely dangerous to kiss someone who has been dead that long because their lips could well end up stuck to yours, not in a romantic love story Their-Lips-Locked sort of way, but in a Stuck-On-Your-Face-After-They-Have-Left-The-Room sort of way. Also because of the huge amounts of static electricity and nuclear fission that can be generated when wizards fall in love, it is essential for the bride to wear a dress made of lead. Being so long near-dead, Mildred was not strong enough to carry the weight of a lead dress, so to be on the safe side, Valla went into one room, Mildred into another and they were married by email.52
Although they all went to the beach pretty well every day, Mordonna and Nerlin preferred it at night. At two in the morning it was always deserted, the only sound the gentle splashing of the waves collapsing on the beach. If they went out and there was a wild wind blowing, making the sea noisy and throwing sand into your face, it was only a matter of a couple of quick spells for the wind to creep away and grow lazy again. If there were clouds across the sky, another spell sent them off to Belgium.
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